Home › Guides › GCSEs

GCSE Exam Dates 2027: When the Exams Start, the Big Papers and Results Day

The GCSE exam dates for 2027 are fixed: the first paper on the common timetable is on Monday 10 May 2027, the last is on Friday 18 June, and GCSE results day is Thursday 19 August 2027. Those dates come from the key dates document published by the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ), the body that coordinates AQA, OCR, Pearson and WJEC. If your child is in Year 11 this year, these are the dates to put in the calendar now, along with the deadlines that fall before the exams and the dates of the biggest papers in English, maths and science.

The full list of GCSE key dates for 2027

JCQ publishes the dates that are common to every exam board. The ones that affect families are below; the rest are administrative deadlines for schools.

Source: JCQ, Key dates in the examination cycle, June 2027 examination series.

Two of those deadlines matter more than they look. The entries deadline means schools need to know which tier your child is sitting in maths, science and languages by mid February, so the mock results in the winter usually decide it. And the access arrangements deadline means that if your child needs extra time, a reader, a scribe or a laptop, the school has to have the evidence and the application done by 21 March. If you think your child qualifies and nobody has mentioned it, raise it with the school's special educational needs coordinator before Christmas.

When are the main GCSE papers in 2027?

The exact days depend on which board your child's school uses for each subject, so check the school's own timetable when it is issued, usually in the spring. As a guide, this is how the biggest papers fall in the final 2027 timetables for the two most widely used combinations, Pearson Edexcel maths and AQA English and science:

Source: summer 2027 GCSE timetable published by Crispin School, taken from the final board timetables. Your child's school may use different boards.

The gap between Thursday 27 May and Tuesday 8 June in that list falls over the late May half term in most areas, which is when many schools run revision sessions. JCQ also moved a handful of smaller papers after consulting schools, including GCSE Chinese, Urdu, Latin and Classical Civilisation, so a timetable printed from an early draft may be out of date.

What happens on results day

GCSE results day is Thursday 19 August 2027. Schools receive the results under embargo on 18 August and release them to students the following morning, usually in person at school, with some schools also emailing them. If a result is lower than expected, the options are a review of marking, which the school requests from the board, or a resit: English and maths resits happen in November for students who are 16 or over by the end of August, and at the next summer series for everyone else. Sixth forms and colleges hold places on results day for students who meet their entry requirements, which are often grade 5 or 6 in the subjects to be studied; our guide to sixth form vs college covers how to choose.

If your child is ill or something goes wrong

If your child is ill on the day of an exam, or something serious happens close to it, such as a bereavement, the school can apply to the exam board for special consideration. That can mean a small adjustment to the mark, or, if a paper is missed for an acceptable reason and enough of the qualification has been completed, a grade based on the other papers. The deadline for schools to apply is 30 June 2027, so tell the exams officer straight away and keep any medical evidence. Our page on whether your child is too ill for school covers the illness rules for ordinary school days.

Planning the year

Most schools run Year 11 mock exams between November and January, and those results feed the tier decisions made before the 21 February entries deadline. Revision plans that start after Easter leave about four weeks before the first paper on 10 May. For the bigger choices after GCSEs, see our guide to what comes after GCSEs.